d high in his arms, the Count waded into the tide, that
chilled deliciously after the heat of his flight.

But it was ridiculous! It was the most condemnable folly! His face
burned with shame as he found himself half-way over the channel and the
waves no higher than his ankles. It was to walk through a few inches of
water that he had nearly stripped to nature!

And a woman was laughing at him, _morbleu!_ Decidedly a woman was
laughing--a young woman, he could wager, with a monstrously musical
laugh, by St. Denys! and witnessing (though he could not see her even
had he wished) this farce from an upper window of the tower. He stood
for a moment irresolute, half inclined to retreat from the ridicule that
never failed to affect him more unpleasantly than danger the most dire;
his face and neck flamed; he forgot all about the full-bosomed Baronne
or remembered her only to agree that nobility demanded some dignity even
in fleeing from an enemy. But the shouts of the pursuers that had died
away in the distance grew again in the neighbourhood, and he pocketed
his diffidence and resumed his boots, then sought the entrance to a
dwelling that had no hospitable portal to the shore.

Close at hand the edifice gained in austerity and dignity while it lost
the last of its scanty air of hospitality. Its walls were of a rough
rubble of granite and whinstone, grown upon at the upper storeys
with grasses and weeds wafted upon the ledges by the winds that blow
indifferent, bringing the green messages of peace from God. A fortalice
dark and square-built, flanked to the southern corner by a round turret,
lit by few windows, and these but tiny and suspicious, it was as Scots
and arrogant as the thistle that had pricked Count Victor's feet when
first he set foot upon the islet.

A low wall surrounded a patch of garden-ground to the rear, one corner
of it grotesquely adorned with a bower all bedraggled with rains, yet
with the red berry of the dog-rose gleaming in the rusty leafage like
grapes of fire. He passed through the little garden and up to the door.
Its arch, ponderous, deep-moulded, hung a scowling eyebrow over the
black and studded oak, and over all was an escutcheon with a blazon of
hands fess-wise and castles embattled and the legend--

"Doom

Man behauld the end of All.
Be nocht Wiser than the Priest.
Hope in God"

He stood on tiptoe to read the more easily the time-blurred characters,
his bagg